Cocktail Hacker

I’m going back to my all time favorite spirit this week, gin. It’s been far too long since I’ve ventured down this path and it’s time I change that.  This week we’re heading back to the pages of the Savoy for an old recipe.  In flipping through the recipes, the Jockey Club Cocktail jumped out as a unique combination of interesting flavors.  Another unique twist in this recipe is that it appears, at first glance, quite dry.  Should be a good time.

Jockey Club Cocktail (Savoy)

1 1/2 oz Dry Gin
4 Dashes Lemon Juice
2 Dashes Creme de Noyau
1 Dash Orange Bitters
1 Dash Angostura Bitters

1) Combine ingredients in a shaker with ice
2) Shake until well chilled
3) Strain into a chilled cocktail glass

When I drink scotch I drink it neat, maybe a tiny piece of ice if I’d like a bit of mellowing to the flavor.  With that, I came in to this week thinking that the Rusty Nail could improve upon straight scotch.  That turned out to not be the case at all, at least not for scotch that’s tasty on its own.  My scotch collection certainly isn’t as extensive as I’d like it to be, but it spans a fair range none-the-less.   So, I had visions of trying a lot of them in this drink.  My direction changed as I got started.

Thinking that this drink was likely most often mixed with a blended scotch I decided to expand my collection with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label.  Using the Joy of Mixology recipe I got started.  With this scotch the Rusty Nail is very lightly peaty and lightly smoky.  There is a nice, yet subtle, sweetness from the Drambuie.  No single flavor shines above the others which I would attribute to the skill of both the Johnnie Walker and Drambuie blenders.  Overall this is a good cocktail, but even after only one a thought that ran through my mind was that I think I’d simply prefer the scotch alone.

From there I decided I’d change things up and try some single malts.  First in the mixing glass was Ardmore, one of my favorite medium smoky scotches.  Makes a great deal of sense then that the resulting Rusty Nail is noticeably smokier which does a good job of offsetting the sweetness of the Drambuie.  While I prefer this mix over the Johnnie Walked, I’m still torn as to whether I’d simply prefer the scotch on its own.

Next up I pulled down my bottle of Macallan 12.  Subtler smoke here.  Still feeling like this is a waste of good single malt though.  The Drambuie if very nice and certainly doesn’t hurt the overall flavor profile but it does mask some of the subtler notes of the scotch.  After this mix I decided I wasn’t going to do any more experiments with single malt for this drink.  Simply wasn’t worth it.

Finally, I decided to wrap things up with another blend.  Specifically one I’ve used here before, The Famous Grouse.  This mix was very smooth.  Truly nothing took over the flavor profile.  After these experiments my inclination is to think that this drink is really intended to be made with a blended scotch.  While the drink with any scotch is no doubt good you lose what’s really special about a single malt, the subtle complexity of flavor.

As for the recipe itself I really like this ratio.  I tried dropping the scotch to 2 oz, thereby bumping up the Drambuie ratio.  The resulting drink was a bit too sweet for my tastes.  As with all cocktail recipes though I suggest you tweak it to your liking.

As I explained last year, I’m not really a football fan.  But, with the coming of Super Bowl XLIV I thought you might be looking for some suggestions on food and drinks.  Last year I offered some advice to lead you in the right direction.  Here are some quick links to last year’s posts to get you in the mood.

Drinks:

• Beer
• Punch
• DIY Highball Bar
• Pre-Mixed Cocktails
• Non-Alcoholic Options

Food:

• Lasagna
• Chili
• Finger Foods
• Sliders
• Sweets

Of the options I’ve listed above my favorite drink choice is definitely the DIY Highball Bar.  It gives your guests a lot of drink options and let’s each person customize the drink to their liking.  As for food, I’d go for lasagna this year.  It’s simple, super tasty and just sounds really good right now.  Well, I hope this has given you some direction.  Enjoy Super Bowl Sunday everyone!

This week I’m going to be mixing up a drink I’ve had on my mental list for a long time, the Rusty Nail.  I’m a huge fan of scotch.  Well, more correctly whiskey in general.  Drambuie on the other hand, I have no idea what to expect.  I’ve never tried it and actually haven’t even looked it up to see what the flavor is.  Should be a great experience!  For this recipe, Regan recommends experimenting with the choice of scotch to change the flavor profile of the cocktail.  Since I’ve got a reasonable selection of scotch this will be a very fun week.

Rusty Nail (Joy of Mixology)

2 1/2 oz Scotch
1/2 oz Drambuie

1) Combine ingredients in a mixing glass
2) Add ice and stir until well chilled
3) Strain into a chilled cocktail glass

Life changing might be a bit of an overstatement, but this cocktail definitely changed the way I look at Benedictine and dry vermouth.  As I began sipping my first Chrysanthemum and taking notes, as I always do, I wrote this down.  “Four sips in and this drink is already one of my favorites.”  At the end of the week, having increased that number of sips quite dramatically, my sentiment remains.  This drink is good, really good in fact.

As you bring the drink to your mouth you’re first going to notice the fresh citrus aroma that the orange twist offers.  On that note, the twist is absolutely essential.  Without it you’ll lose a layer of complexity that I think this drink deserves.  I say that because the other two main ingredients are deeply complex unto themselves.  I offered some thoughts on benedictine earlier in the week and I discussed dry vermouth a while back.  Although, having said that, I don’t think I really appreciated either of them until I took my first, and subsequent, sips of this drink.  Their complexity is deep and hugely pleasing.

While on it’s own I find Benedictine to be a little too sweet, when tempered with the vermouth the sweetness is perfect.  Similarly, I wouldn’t usually drink a glass of dry vermouth on its own.  Though, mixed in this cocktail the vermouth offers its complexity and funkiness in a way that I find very pleasing.  While I doubt I need to mention this to anyone reading this blog, I will anyway.  Please go with a good dry vermouth.  No sense in ruining good Benedictine with crappy vermouth.  Finally, on top of these base flavors you’re adding a hint of citrus from the orange zest.  Which, again, is very much essential to the final flavor profile.  Same goes for absinthe.  While you’re only adding a small amount the flavor melds well with the others to increase the complexity even further.  Keep the amount of absinthe small, too.  Somewhere between 3 dashes and 1/8 oz depending on your preference.  I go with 1/8 oz.

This drink is definitely one to mix up for yourself.  And, to compound that, I’d ask that if you’ve never much like dry vermouth that you give this mix a try.  I think you’ll find yourself pleasantly surprised with your new found respect.

I mentioned in the intro that this week’s cocktail, and more specifically its ingredients, are old school.  In fact, very few are more old school than Benedictine.  This year the herbal liqueur celebrates its 500th anniversary!  The liqueur was first developed by monks in 1510.  Their production of the herbal spirit progressed for over 250 years until the recipe was tragically thought lost in the 1791 during the French Revolution.  As luck would have it, the recipe had been written down in a book that was then sold to a local art collector.  The recipe remained lost, however, until it was rediscovered in 1863 by Alexandre Le Grand.  Alexandre recognized the quality of the recipe and finally relaunched the liqueur as a commercial product in 1873.  The company he created has been making the spirit ever since.

But, what is it?  What’s it like?  I had the very same questions until fairly recently.  Like most people I’d heard about the liqueur or its namesake cocktail the B&B (Benedictine and Brandy, for which the company has released another product), but I’d never tried it.  The flavor is likely unlike anything you’ve ever had before.  Like the first time you taste Chartreuse, your first sip of Benedictine is an intriguing one as the flavors expand and develop.  The aroma is like that of a really fresh herb garden.  I pick up notes of sage, rosemary, juniper all very crisp and fresh.  The liqueur is more viscous than I expected given it’s 40% ABV.  You really don’t notice the high alcohol in the flavor though.  It’s well covered by the sweetness and herbal qualities.  The flavor of the herbs is more well blended in the flavor than I found in the aroma.  I don’t get any one specific herb coming through stronger than any others.  The flavor profile as a whole is really complex and fantastic.  While I don’t think it’s something I’d drink straight (it’s quite sweet), in cocktails like the Chrysanthemum or the Monkey Gland it adds a depth of flavor that I don’t think can be achieved any other way.

If you’ve never tried Benedictine you really owe it to yourself to pick some up and mix up a drink.  You’ll appreciate the results.

If you’re looking for some deeper background info check out these sites:

Wikipedia – Benedictine Liqueur (General background info)

Benedictine’s Website (More in depth history.  Be sure to check out the palace as well)

Serious Eats – Benedictine (Paul Clark discusses the history, ingredients and uses of Benedictine)

As I was sifting through my RSS feeds this morning I stumbled upon these engineering drawings of cocktails.  They’re very well done and quite geeky.  Or, put more succinctly, awesome.

In reading through the comments on Nathan’s post, it seems that this was originally a full color poster.  If anyone knows where I can purchase one, please let me know.  I’d love to add it to my collection of cocktail ephemera.

This week I’m going old school again and pulling a recipe from the pages of the The Savoy Cocktail Book, the Chrysanthemum cocktail.  In addition to the recipe the ingredients for this cocktail are old school as well.  Benedictine, for example, has been around for 500 years this year.  More on that later this week.

The Savoy notes that the Chrysanthemum is “well-known and very popular in the American Bar of the S.S. Europa.”  The SS Europa also has an interesting history that’s worth noting.  The Europa was initially built as an ocean liner to make the transatlantic crossing.  Shortly after being put in to service it took the Blue Riband, becoming the fastest passenger liner making the crossing at the time, a title it would keep for over three years.  With the liner’s speed the Norddeutsche Lloyd company was able to offer a weekly transatlantic trip with only a pair of ships.  There are some other cool bits that you can read about at the Wikipedia link above.  My favorite is that the Europa had a sea plane that launched by catapult from the upper deck.  Okay, cocktail time!

Chrysanthemum (Savoy)

2 oz Dry Vermouth
1 oz Benedictine
3 Dashes Absinthe

1) Combine ingredients in a shaker over ice
2) Shake until well chilled *
3) Strain into a chilled cocktail glass
4) Garnish with an orange twist

*For reasons unknown to me, most of the Savoy recipes call for shaking.  However, since this recipe includes no cloudy ingredients I’ll be stirring it instead.

The Blackthorn is good.  Nothing that I’m going to be adding to my top cocktails list though by any means.  This drink, as Regan wisely points out, is, at its base, a twist on the Manhattan.  Therein, you see, lay my main problem.  The Manhattan was one of the first cocktails that I experimented with here on Cocktail Hacker and one of my first introductions to the loveliness of bourbon.  I truly love a well mixed Manhattan and therefore had the bar set quite high going in.  To use a bad sports metaphor, this drink placed but definitely didn’t win.

Savoy Recipe: I’ll start my discussion with the classic recipe.  There are two main twists to note.  First, and most obviously, the Savoy recipe is made with dry vermouth.  Second, and quite related, the vermouth is a full half the recipe.  Of the two recipes this was my least favorite.  It wasn’t bad by any means, but not something I really enjoyed.  The Irish whiskey (Jameson in my case), being a bit lighter than some other whiskies, was a tad overpowered by the vermouth.  In an effort to correct this issue I tried dropping the vermouth to 1 oz and upping the whiskey to 2 oz.  Not a good call.  I ended up dumping that variant out.

Regan’s Recipe: Now we can really start making some Manhattan comparisons.  The ratios are exactly the same, the bitters are the same, the only changes are the whiskey and the addition of a touch of absinthe.  My thoughts on the whiskey are the same as with the Savoy recipe.  The absinthe, however, adds a nice twist.  First, a warning, go easy.  Like bitters, you should think of the absinthe in this recipe as a cocktail spice.  What I ended up doing was to add my three dashes of Angostura to the shaker tin first, eyeball the amount, then add the same amount of absinthe.  This let me get the amounts as close to even as I could and if I messed up, which I did, I could dump some out and not waste the spirits.

Now for a bit about the drink itself.  The ratios are good in this one, so I didn’t feel the need to play with that at all.  The flavor is a bit like a muted Manhattan with an extra layer of anise absinthe flavor.  In fact, I really like the flavor the absinthe brings a lot.  Next time I mix up a Manhattan I think I’ll give that twist a try.  As for the Blackthorn, I think I’ll be leaving this one to the recipe books.

This week has been jam packed and I haven’t had nearly enough time to explore this cocktail to the depth I’d like.  So, rather than cutting my explorations short, I’m going to extend in to a second week and do this right.  One of the angles I have yet to explore is the original recipe for the Blackthorn from The Savoy Cocktail Book.

Blackthorn (Savoy)

1 1/2 oz Irish Whiskey
1 1/2 oz French (Dry) Vermouth
3 Dashes Angostura Bitters
3 Dashes Absinthe

1) Combine ingredients in a shaker with ice
2) Shake until well chilled
3) Strain into a cocktail glass

There are a couple interesting points to note about the recipe itself before I even get a chance to mix it up.  First, note that this original recipe calls for dry vermouth rather than the sweet called for in Regan’s recipe.  While this change will certainly alter the flavor of the cocktail quite significantly it shows a good example of how one can tweak a recipe by changing only one ingredient.  Second, note that this recipe calls for the drink to be shaken despite all the ingredients being clear.  As we’ve seen from previous experiments this will likely result in a colder, more diluted finished cocktail.  Whether this was the intent of the original recipe’s author is hard to say as nearly every cocktail recipe in the Savoy calls for shaking.

So, with that, I’m again off on the cocktail journey.  Check back next week for my findings on the differences in recipes and techniques.  Should be a tasty week.